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Jerusalem’s Answer 
to Present Day 
Inquiries 


WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE 
TO THE WORK OF THE 
STUDENT VOLUNTEER 

MOVEMENT 


JEssE R. WILSON 


STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
419 FourTH AVENUE 
New York, N. Y. 








xo es 


FOREWORD 


The Jerusalem meeting of the International Missionary 
Council brought together on the Mount of Olives at the 
Easter season of 1928 two hundred and forty delegates 
representing fifty nations. They “came by roads that lead 
up from the ends of the earth to the Holy City to face 
frankly and together the final challenging issue in the 
world today—the question of the adequacy of the 
Christian Message to transform and save man in face 
of his sin-tormented life everywhere, and especially in 
face of the world-conquering tides of material civiliza- 
tion and the resultant maelstrom of industrial and rural 
revolution and inter-racial conflict.” 


Among those present at Jerusalem were many deeply 
interested in the student life of North America with 
reference to the work of the church around the world. 
Several of these are closely connected with the Student 
Volunteer Movement of the United States and Canada; 
namely, Dr. Robert E. Speer, Honorary Chairman of the 
Movement’s General Council, Mr. Milton Stauffer and 
Mr. E. Fay Campbell, Chairman and Vice-Chairman re- 
spectively of the Administrative Committee, and Jesse R. 
Wilson, General Secretary. It is little wonder, therefore, 
that “Jerusalem” which seemed to gather up the very 
best missionary thinking of the past decade and place it 
right at the heart of the missionary life of the church in 
well-conceived plans and policies for the future should 
find a large place on the program of the annual meeting 
of the General Council of the Movement at Kalamazoo, 
Mich., August 31 to September 6, 1928. 


Many believe that “Jerusalem” gave adequate answers 
to serious inquiries concerning missions which arise in 
student circles today. The following statement, there- 
fore, was presented to the General Council of the Move- 
ment with the thought that it might lead to a further 
study of the Jerusalem findings and to a clearer under- 
standing of the Movement’s responsibility in the light of 
them. It is in accordance with a vote of the Kalamazoo 
Council that this statement reappears in pamphlet form. 


J.R.W. 


JERUSALEM’S ANSWER 


EVERAL general observations about the 
Jerusalem meeting of the International 
Missionary Council have interested me 

greatly. One is that Jerusalem in its findings 
seems to have embodied the results of the very 
best missionary thinking of recent years. No 
important field of missionary thought was left 
untouched. No serious criticism of recent pro- 
grams, policies, or tendencies was overlooked. 
No problem or perplexing situation in world 
affairs affecting missions was left without con- 
sideration. And most surprising of all, no cour- 
ageous position had to be abandoned through 
the failure of the whole Council to stand in 
support of it. In positive and convincing state- 
ment of the Christian missionary cause, in logi- 
cal conclusions as to what is right and what is 
wrong in past and present missionary endeavor, 
and in constructive recommendations for the 
future, the men and women at Jerusalem, with 
rare insight and fearlessness, seemed to gather 
up from all quarters the very best and most 
progressive suggestions which have emerged out 
of the ten-year period of intense post-war mis- 
sionary thinking. 


Another thing of interest is that the findings 
and conclusions of Jerusalem were set forth 
with no pretense toward external authority. 
Jerusalem wasa representative, deliberative coun- 
cil, and in no sense a representative, legislative 
assembly. The representative character of its 

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membership merits consideration. There were 
present men and women from fifty different 
nations representing twenty-six national or in- 
ternational Christian Councils and practically 
the whole of Protestantism in its foreign mis- 
sionary relationships. For the most part, these 
delegates could and did speak with the authority 
of scholarship and experience, but even so they 
modestly send forth their findings to stand or 
fall in accordance with whether or not they 
commend themselves to others by their own in- 
trinsic worth. 


A further observation is that whatever else 
Jerusalem may have been, it was not a mere 
academic gathering. There was no attempt to 
robe itself in theories and think that by so do- 
ing it had done its work. It had no place for 
mere value-judgments; it sought values only in 
facts and realities. Its conclusions are not the 
sum total of different hypotheses nor the 
results of mere rationalization. The Jerusalem 
delegates were men and women in close grips 
with life situations. They had always before 
them visions of their fellows, toiling, suffering, 
struggling, despairing, beaten down by poverty, 
ignorance, disease, superstition, or else fairly 
well satisfied now but doomed to ultimate dis- 
appointment because of trust only in the pomp 
and show of transient things. They wanted to 
help these people everywhere—help them vitally 
and in ways that count for eternity. They 
knew their lack of power to help apart from 
God, and therefore they sought not only by 
corporate thinking but also by corporate wor- 

4 


ship ways of spiritual ministry and practical 
helpfulness. 


This leads me to record another general obser- 
vation. Jerusalem was a Christian Council. We 
met as convinced Christians in the name and in 
the spirit of Jesus Christ. We knew out of past 
experiences and by divine intuition that the 
truth and light we sought lay in Christ and 
a fuller understanding of Him. We studied 
non-Christian religions with an abandon and a 
degree of willingness to find in them elements 
of good that perhaps have never before char- 
acterized a missionary gathering. But our chief 
interest was not in these systems of religious 
thought so much as in the condition of men 
and women and little children whose lives are 
influenced either for good or for ill by them. 
Our study was with the desire that we might 
be the better able to present Him whom we 
steadfastly believe came to bring fullness of 
light and life to all men. As we studied, He 
stood forth more clearly than we had ever seen 
Him before as unique, supreme, and necessary 
to the life of individuals and of the world. 


Our conclusions, therefore, came not so much 
in the form of arguments designed to convince 
as in the form of testimonies designed to induce 
others to try to discover in Christ all and more 
than we had found. Therefore, if some would 
accuse us of a Christian bias, we frankly admit 
it. It was a bias consciously formed, and we 
are willing to let time and the judgment of 
men and God determine whether or not we de- 
part from truth in following Christ. 

5 


In trying to present Jerusalem’s answer to 
present-day inquiries, it seems only fair to do 
it from the background of this characterization. 
Our task, then, is really to discover what this 
kind of a Council had to say to the persistent 
questions directed at the heart of the mission- 
ary enterprise. 


As actually asked by seriously inquiring 
minds, these questions are legion. But ignoring 
for the most part many variations of the ques- 
tions and putting all from the point of view 
of the man who really wants to know, this 
legion can be greatly reduced. 


Six are listed below. No one would maintain 
that these six are all-inclusive but we may be- 
lieve that in answering them many of the most 
important inquiries can be met. They are as 
follows: 


[ 1 ] What Is the Christian Message? 
[ 2 ] What Is the Motive that Prompts to Its 
Proclamation? 


[ 3 ] What Is the Spirit of Christian Mis- 
sionary Endeavor? 

[ 4] What Is the Christian Attitude Toward 
Non-Christian Faiths? 

[5] What Are Some of the Outstanding 


Weaknesses in the Present Situation? 


[ 6 ] What Is Proposed for the Future? 


Interestingly enough, all of these are dealt 
with pointedly in the Statement of the Christian 
Message. The other documents of the Council 
are important and their arguments and conclu- 

6 


sions will help to form the background of all 
that is said here, but because the best of all the 
other findings is summed up in the Message 
Statement, reference will be made most fre- 
quently to it. 


Wuat Is THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE? 


A great deal of confusion in recent years has 
centered around this question. Many Christians 
have been bewildered in the presence of it. 
Many, with varying degrees of success so far as 
the general acceptability of their statements is 
concerned, have tried to answer it. Some have 
tried to put into their answer as little as possi- 
ble; others have tried to put in as much as 
possible; and still others have tried to distin- 
guish between “what” and “whom.” Jerusalem 
did not try to see how little or how much it 
could say. Rather out of its two weeks of 
corporate study and prayer, out of the varied 
experiences of its whole membership, and in the 
light of its knowledge of the world, it tried to 
say what is sufficient and adequate. Moreover, 
while recognizing the superior value of the 
“whom” of belief, it did not overlook the es- 
sential importance of the “what.” Further, 
Jerusalem was wise enough to state many things 
in new, crisp phrases and at the same time cour- 
ageous enough to use old expressions where the 
new either were not forthcoming, or were in- 
adequate because inaccurate, or simply did not 
have the strength of some of the old terms 
which a passing fancy would try to render 
obsolete. 


Just how acceptable the Jerusalem Statement 
is going to be, it is too soon to judge, but those 
of us who first heard it read, and were ready 
without one dissenting vote to adopt it as our 
own, felt we were in the presence of an ac- 
complished miracle. And certainly the recep- 
tion which has so far been given this statement 
is one of the most encouraging events of the 
year, and may prove to be one of the most sig- 
nificant of the decade. 


It would be necessary to quote at length from 
all sections of the Statement to give in full 
Jerusalem’s answer to the specific question, 
“What is the Christian Message?” But this is 
not necessary since the statement itself is avail- 
able to all. Briefly, and only by way of sug- 
gestion, the answer is as follows: 


“Our message is Jesus Christ. He is the revelation of 
what God is and of what men through Him may become. 
In Him we come face to face with the ultimate reality 
of the universe; He makes known to us God as our 
Father, perfect and infinite in love and in righteousness; 
for in Him we find God incarnate, the final, yet ever- 
unfolding, revelation of the God in whom we live and 
move and have our being. . . . Jesus Christ, in His life 
and through His death and resurrection, has disclosed to 
us the Father, the Supreme Reality, as almighty Love, 
reconciling the world to Himself by the Cross, suffer- 
ing with men in their struggle against sin and evil, bear- 
ing with them and for them the burden of sin, forgiving 
them as they, with forgiveness in their own hearts, turn 
to Him in repentance and faith, and creating humanity 
anew for an ever-growing, ever-enlarging, ever-lasting 


life.” 


And again in the words of the Lausanne 
Conference quoted in the Jerusalem Message we 
have the following very clear statement: 

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“Jesus Christ, as the crucified and the living One, as 
Saviour and Lord, is also the center of the world-wide 
Gospel of the Apostles and the Church. Because He Him- 
self is the Gospel, the Gospel is the Message of the 
Church to the World. It is more than a philosophical 
theory; more than a theological system; more than a pro- 
gram for material betterment. The Gospel is rather the 
gift of a new world from God to this old world of sin 
and death; still more, it is the victory over sin and death, 
the revelation of eternal life in Him who has knit to- 
gether the whole family in heaven and on earth in the 
communion of saints, united in the fellowship of service, 
of prayer, and of praise.” 


That this is the Christian Message with im- 
plications both individual and social, extending 
out to the whole world, everyone at Jerusalem 
was ready to affirm. The Student Volunteer 
Movement finds it a satisfactory statement of 
its Own missionary attitude. We go out with 
the desire and avowed intention of helping to 
recruit men and women who will go to all the 
world to deliver by life and by word this mes- 
sage as the only way of light and life for all 


men. 


Wuat Is THE CuHriIsTIAN MIssIoNARY MOTIVE? 


When Jerusalem deals with the motive that 
prompts men and women to go forth in the 
proclamation of this message, it is no less speci- 
fic and positive. Believing this good news to be 
“the answer to the world’s greatest need” and 
resting not on our discovery or achievements, 
but ‘“‘on what we recognize as an act of God,” 
we are constrained by the love of Christ to 
share it with all the world. Many ulterior and 
inferior motives have been charged up against 
9 


missionaries. These the Jerusalem Council re- 
pudiates as being unworthy of Christians: 


“We cannot tolerate any desire, conscious or uncon- 
scious, to use this movement for purposes of fastening a 
bondage, economic, political or social, on any people. 
Going deeper, on our part we would repudiate any symp- 
toms of a religious imperialism that would desire to 
impose beliefs and practices on others in order to man- 
age their souls in their supposed interests. We obey a 
God who respects our wills and we desire to respect those 
of others. Nor have we the desire to bind up our Gos- 
pel with fixed ecclesiastical forms which derive their 
meaning from the experience of the Western Church.... 
We ardently desire that the younger churches should 
express the Gospel through their own genius and through 
forms suitable to their racial heritage. There must be no 
desire to lord it over the personal or collective faith of 
others.” 


“Herein lies the Christian- motive; it is simple. We 
cannot live without Christ and we cannot bear to think 
of men living without Him. We cannot be content to 
live in a world that is un-Christlike. We cannot be idle 
while the yearning of His heart for His brethren is un- 
satisfied. Since Christ is the motive, the end of Christian 
missions fits in with that motive. Its end is nothing less 
than the production of Christlike character in individuals 
and societies and nations through faith in and fellowship 
with Christ the living Saviour, and through corporate 
sharing of life in a divine society. Christ is our motive 
and Christ is our end. We must give nothing less and 
we can give nothing more.” 


This motive must be kept at the very heart 
of the Student Volunteer Movement’s recruit- 
ing program. Nothing short of this personal 
constraint of Christ is a sufficient reason for 
one’s becoming a missionary. Nothing short of 
this will be sufficient to keep one a missionary 
or enable him as a missionary to do work that is 

10 


deep, vital, transforming and abiding. “If any 
man is in Christ Jesus, there is a new creation.” 
The world’s greatest need is for new creations. 
Only those who go out as missionaries because 
of the indwelling Christ can bring people into 
that vital touch with Christ which literally 
makes men over again. Men need life; the 
source of life is God; God has chosen to mediate 
that life to men through Christ; therefore men 
need Christ. It is the business of missionaries 
to proclaim Him. He is our motive and our 
end. ‘““We must give nothing less and we can 
give nothing more.” 


Wuat Is THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN 
MiIsst1ONARY ENDEAVOR? 


The spirit of our endeavor, Jerusalem character- 
izes with three words: Humility, Penitence, and 
Love. These three words in this connection 
answer a very pointed present day question 
concerning missions; for many ask, “Is there 
not of necessity in missions a reprehensible spirit 
of condescending patronage to a supposedly in- 
ferior people?” Jerusalem says that this spirit 
may manifest itself, but it is utterly wrong, 
and is in no way inherent in or necessarily en- 
volved in Christian missionary work. A real 
missionary is one sent of God speaking the 
words of God. It is not himself nor his own 
message he proclaims but God’s. He passes on 
that which he himself has received; and his pos- 
session of it is a trusteeship and a cause for 
thanksgiving but not for boasting at all. And 
11 


further, “if in our delivery of it self-assertion 
finds any place, we shall spoil that message and 
hinder its acceptance.” 


And similarly, we cannot go out today as 
missionaries without the spirit of genuine peni- 
tence. We and our fathers before us have been 
blind to many of the implications of our faith. 
We have been sluggish in the discharge of our 
responsibility. Facing these things, as face them 
we ought and must, we can go out only in a 
spirit of deep regret that we who have received 
so much have given so little. 


But humility and penitence are no substitutes 
for love. In fact, in this connection at least, 
they are spurious unless they generate love; and 
so the real missionary goes to his task with a 
humble, penitent, and loving spirit to deliver 
his message of the love of God and make its 
power known to as many as possible. 


And here again we may wonder whether a 
lack of this three-fold spirit in the present stu- 
dent generation may not account at least in 
part for the great falling off in the number of 
volunteers. Often those who have been loudest 
in their condemnation of a sense of superiority 
in missionaries have in the pride of their own 
opinion given a good example of the thing 
which they were condemning. If they were as 
penitent and as loving as they think missionaries 
ought to be, nothing in the world would keep 
many of them from becoming missionaries 
themselves. 


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Wuat Is THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARD 
Non-CHRISTIAN FaITHs? 


At no point did Jerusalem do better or more 
conclusive thinking or find more felicitous 
phrasing for the statement of its conclusions 
than in response to the question as to what our 
attitude toward non-Christian systems of life 
and thought ought to be. A most helpful dis- 
tinction was kept in mind all along; namely, 
the difference between the systems themselves 
and the people affected by the systems. Jeru- 
salem’s primary interest was in the people and, 
so far as I could discern, it had no desire at all 
merely to bolster up or to tear down any re- 
ligious faith. In fact, it recognized that the 
non-Christian religions are finding it increas- 
ingly difficult to maintain themselves not be- 
cause of the advances of Christianity but in 
the face of a rising tide of education, democ- 
racy, and scientific development. 


These very things, indicating a materialistic 
trend in life, often present real problems to 
Christianity itself, and certainly their effect on 
non-Christian faiths thrusts upon Christians a 
new responsibility and a new element of urg- 
ency for carrying the Gospel to the whole 
world. For as men are torn loose from old 
moorings, which at their best have been “able 
to effect some real deliverance from many of 
the evils which afflict the world,” there is all 
the more need for helping them “to find the 
fullness of light and power in Christ.” 

I have already intimated that perhaps no 
Christian missionary gathering ever went far- 
ther in a deliberate attempt to discover and 

13 


appreciate the best in non-Christian religions. 
There was no reluctance to admit the existence 
of good wherever it manifests itself. Rather 
in the words of the Council: 


“We rejoice to think that just because in Jesus Christ 
the light that lighteneth every man shone forth in its 
full splendor, we find rays of that same light where He 
is unknown or even is rejected. We welcome every noble 
quality in non-Christian persons or systems as further 
proof that the Father, who sent His Son into the world, 
has nowhere left Himself without witness.” 


But, nevertheless, there was the clearest call 
to followers of non-Christian religions “‘to dis- 
cern that all the good of which men have con- 
ceived is fulfilled and secured in Christ.” At 
this point one of the finest statements of the 
Council emerged. 


“Christianity is not a Western religion, nor is it yet 
effectively accepted by the Western world as a whole. 
Christ belongs to the peoples of Africa and Asia as much 
as to the European or American. We call all men to 
equal fellowship in Him. But to come to Him is always 
self-surrender. We must not come in the pride of na- 
tional heritage or religious tradition; he who would enter 
the Kingdom of God must become as a little child, 
though in that Kingdom are all the treasures of man’s 
aspirations, consecrated and harmonized. Just because 
Christ is the self-disclosure of the One God, all human 
aspirations are towards Him, and yet of no human tradi- 
tion is He merely the continuation. He is the desire of all 
nations; but He is always more, and other, than they had 
desired before they learnt of Him. But we would insist 
that when the Gospel of the Love of God comes home 
with power to the human heart, it speaks to each man, 
not as Moslem or as Buddhist, or as an adherent of any 
system, but just as man. And while we rightly study 
other religions in order to approach men wisely, yet at 
the last we speak as men to men, inviting them to share 
with us the pardon and the life that we have found in 
Christ.” 

14 


This latter idea of the solidarity of the human 
race making for a common and universal need 
for Christ was further developed in a way to 
express our own spirit of humility as follows: 


“We do not go to the nations called non-Christian be- 
cause they are the worst of the world and they alone are 
in need—we go because they are a part of the world and 
share with us in the same human need—the need of re- 
-demption from ourselves and from sin, the need to have 
life complete and abundant and to be remade after this 
pattern of Christlikeness. We desire a world in which 
Christ will not be crucified but where His Spirit shall 
reign.” 


To my mind this position is thoroughly 
Christian; and I cannot conceive of any other, 
substantially either more or less, which would 
be. Anyone who does not rejoice in truth 
wherever found can hardly be a follower of 
Him who said, “I am the truth’; but, on the 
other hand, he who cannot see that men every- 
where apart from Jesus Christ are groping in 
darkness, cannot well be a follower of Him who 
said, “I am the light of the world: he that fol- 
loweth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall 


have the light of life.” 


At this point also the Student Volunteer 
Movement should make its stand unequivocal. 
Men either do or do not need Jesus Christ. If 
they do not need Him there is not much justi- 
fication for a Christian missionary movement. 
If they do need Him, they need Him desper- 
ately, and we should be restless until all have 
a chance of knowing Him in something of the 
fullness of His light and power. Let us have 
done with fear lest we offend men by preaching 

15 


Christ unto them. Some may be offended, for 
today, also, Christ crucified may be “unto Jews 
a stumbling block and unto Greeks foolishness.” 
The Gospel has always been a savor of life unto 
life to some and of death unto death to others. 
It all depends on the individual response. But 
we must not prejudge, and regardless of how 
some may respond, others, both Jews and 
Greeks, will find Christ to be “the power of 
God and the wisdom of God,” and these will 
be eternally grateful for the message. 


Wuat ARE SOME OF THE OUTSTANDING 
WEAKNESSES OF THE PRESENT 
MIssIONARY SITUATION? 


Jerusalem recognized three different kinds of 
weaknesses in the present missionary situation: 
enemies in the rear, vulnerable points in our so- 
called Christian civilization, and gaps in our 
strategy of advance. ‘These exist and trouble 
us partly through a failure “to mitigate the 
evils which advancing industrialism has brought 
in its train.” This, Jerusalem believes, ‘has 
been a positive hindrance—perhaps the greatest 
of such hindrances—to the power and extension 
of the missionary enterprise.” Then there is 
the further fact that while secular civilization 
has unquestionably helped to serve the cause of 
Christ by “dispersing the darkness of ignorance, 
superstition, and vulgarity,” it has in many 
cases outgrown our spiritual and moral control. 
Progress in things spiritual and moral has not 
kept pace with progress in material civilization. 
Non-Christian peoples now, as never before, 
are quick to point this out. Jerusalem peni- 

16 


tently confessed our failure 


“to bring the ordering of men’s lives into conformity to 
the spirit of Christ. The Church has not firmly and ef- 
fectively set its face against race-hatred, race-envy, race- 
contempt, or against social envy and contempt and class- 
bitterness, or against racial, national, and social pride, or 
against the lust for wealth and exploitation of the poor 
or weak. We believe that the Gospel ‘proclaims the only 
way by which humanity can escape from class and race- 
hatred.’ But we are forced to recognize that such a claim 
requires to be made good and that the record of Christen- 
dom hitherto is not sufficient to sustain it.” 


And in an equally vital even though a less 
personal realm, it is recognized that it must be 
“4 serious obstacle to missionary effort if a non- 
Christian country feels that the relation of the 
so-called Christian countries to itself is morally 
unsound or is alien to the principles of Christ.” 
The fact that non-Christian nations do feel this 
way toward the Western and so-called Christian 
nations is obvious to all. We cannot hope to 
win the world to Christ until we do more to 
deliver the name of Christ and Christianity 
from complicity in any evil or injustice; and, in 
order to do this, we must first deliver Christians 
themselves from complacency in the presence 
of such things. 


In the strategy of our advance, many weak- 
nesses were hinted at but two areas of neglect 
were repeatedly pointed out. One is in the 
realm of education where there are “certain 
bewilderments and fears, natural enough in 
themselves, but, if allowed to remain, fatal to 
the progress which we believe that God wills 
us to make.” Specifically under this, two things 


were pointed out: 
i? 


[ 1] “Uncertainty as to the place of education in the 
Christian adventure, and a tendency to contrast the work 
of the teacher, training his pupils step by step for fullness 
of life with that of the evangelist whose primary object is 
regarded by many as securing immediate conversions.” 


[ 2 ] “Consequent distrust both in Christian and non- 
Christian lands of the worth of educational methods, and 
reluctance to meet their demands for a large provision of 
workers and equipment.” 


In answer to this situation, Jerusalem set 
forth the fact that in Jesus “tthe contrast be- 
tween teaching and preaching, education and 
evangelism, simply does not exist”; and second, 
that inasmuch as our goal is the conversion of 
the world, “‘we can interpret that conversion in 
terms of the ever-present energy of God, sub- 
duing by love our wills to Himself”; or we can 
interpret it as a “training up of humanity for 
fullness of life in Him. In either case we 
have our share and our responsibility, whether 
as teachers or evangelists, parents or pastors. 
The whole effort of the Church is towards this 
one result. Its members may differ in method 
but their function and aim are the same: all 
are educators, servants of Him whom Clement 
of Alexandria truly called ‘the Educator.’ ” 


The other great area of neglect has to do 
with the whole Christian program in rural dis- 
tricts. One of Jerusalem’s strongest appeals is 
at this point. 


“Specific attention to rural needs by missions and 
churches is necessary, in part because of the numbers of 
people involved—nearly a thousand million of them— 
and the great issues of Christian civilization at stake; but 
also because the rural people live apart from the centers 
of wealth and population, their occupations differ in 


18 


many respects from those of industrial and urban places, 
and many aspects of their institutional and group life 
have no counterpart in the city. Moreover, this great 
branch of mission service, in all its implications for 
Kingdom-building, is not now sufficiently covered, either 
as to policies and programs or as to specially trained 
leadership and adequate financial support.” 


“In this immense rural work the missionary enterprise 
faces a great opportunity. Much work is under way, but 
much of it does not adequately affect the life and work 
of the people. To be fully successful, it must redeem 
whole communities and bring them into a new and abid- 
ing social vitality, a truly Christian method of living 
together. . . . We appeal to all boards, officials, mission- 
aries, churches, to all other lovers of their fellow men, 
to assist in this work so vital to the world’s welfare. The 
rural fields are indeed ‘white unto the harvest.’ ” 


In recent years, we have been afraid to put 
the note of realism in our missionary appeals. 
It has not been good form to tell of thousands 
of hungry people, thousands more who live in 
the depths of degradation and disease with none 
to deliver, whole provinces without the light 
of this life much less the light of life eternal. 
We have been afraid we might cause some one 
to cry, and that simply must not be done, be- 
cause forsooth it is an emotional appeal. Would 
to God our emotions could get stirred again! 
Maybe our other faculties would be released and 
we would see clearly and will nobly for the 
setting right of many wrong things. We seem 
to forget that Jesus wept over Jerusalem be- 
cause He faced reality and knew how awful it 
was. We need once more to see the restless 
millions desperately in need of “that light whose 
dawning maketh all things new.” 


19 


Wuat Is PROPOSED FOR THE FUTURE? 


No one who has followed thus far can have 
failed to suspect that in the judgment of Jeru- 
salem the day of missions is far from being over. 
The impression made on those of us who were 
there is that the world mission and expansion 
of Christianity is just getting under way. To 
use Dr. Speer’s phrase, there are tasks not only 
unaccomplished but as yet unattempted. The 
International Missionary Council girded itself 
for both kinds of tasks and, interestingly 
enough, while retaining the word ‘missionary’ 
in its title, its membership in the future will 
include the national Christian Councils, or sim- 
ilar organizations, of mission lands, such as 
China, Japan, India, Africa, and South America 
as well as those of the western nations. 


Every commission report brought in recom- 
mendations for an enlarged missionary program, 
and to insure the carrying out of this program, 
so far as the International Missionary Council 
is concerned, the Council called to its full time 
leadership Dr. John R. Mott, who has already 
presented his resignation to the Y. M. C. A. in 
order to devote his best energies to this ever- 
enlarging work. 


Two major proposals were made for the fu- 
ture: one calls for a strengthening of the in- 
digenous churches, increasing the national 
leadership, and placing an ever-enlarging respon- 
sibility on the local churches to carry on an 
adequate program of evangelization. 

20 


The other proposal calls for an increase in 
personnel and funds from the west. So careful 
was everyone in the Council not to over-state 
this call that some of us at the end of the two 
weeks felt that very little had been said. The 
missionaries showed a becoming reluctance to 
point out specifically the needs which they rec- 
ognize. The Christian nationals, on their part, 
were a bit unprepared to speak for their coun- 
tries as a whole. 


But two lines of thought and statement re- 
veal clearly a much greater call to the West for 
help in terms of both men and money than we 
at Jerusalem at first suspected. One is that the 
clearest and most unmistakable implication of 
the needs recognized, of the plans made, and of 
the forces released is that the unaccomplished 
and unattempted tasks must be undertaken by 
the combined and enlarged forces of both the 
younger and the older churches. And while it 
was more clearly recognized than ever before 
that the younger churches must be “more 
deeply rooted in the soil” and that they hold 
a primary responsibility for their own people, 
the task is still too great for them alone. In 
the various findings are no less than a dozen 
specific calls for missionaries and mission funds 
for carrying on and enlarging existing work. 
Some of these calls are unmistakably clear. 


The report on “Christianity and Industrial 
Problems” sets forth one of the functions of 
the International Missionary Council in the fol- 
lowing terms: “To bring to the notice of 
Christian bodies and mission boards the urgent 

a 


necessity of securing an adequate supply of 
competent workers for the mission field equip- 
ped with the necessary economic and social 
training.” 


In the Message Statement we have these 
words: 


““As together, Christians of all lands, we have surveyed 
the world and the needs of men we are convinced of the 
urgent necessity for a great increase in the Christian 
forces in all countries and for a still further measure of 
cooperation between the churches of all nations in more 
speedily laying the claim of Christ upon all the unoccu- 
pied areas of the world and of human life.” 


Mr. K. T. Paul of India, one of the outstand- 
ing spirits of the Council, drove this home with 
great force. He said, “I want to say in the very 
clearest possible terms that the Church in India 
does want missionaries, as many as you can 
send... . It is the missionary, the human being 
who lives and loves in the ordinary everyday 
life of Christ that is always welcome. We want 
missionaries, Christlike missionaries who will 
come and live among us and identify them- 
selves with us, who will share with us all our 
joys and sorrows in the spirit of Christ.” 


Since this is the supreme question with the 
Student Volunteer Movement we may conclude 
the case by giving a few figures. At the present 
time there are about 30,000 foreign missionaries 
under Protestant sending societies. It is esti- 
mated that the average term of service of a mis- 
sionary, by reason of the many forces which 
oppose long term service, is not over fifteen 
years. In order not to overstate the situation, 
let us assume that this life-service expectancy 

22 


is twenty years. This means that we ought to 
have at least 1,500 new missionaries going out 
from North America and Europe every year 
to maintain the present numerical status of the 
missionary force. 


The United States and Canada in the past 
have furnished a full four-sevenths of the total 
number of missionaries. This would mean that 
our yearly output ought to be not less than 
eight hundred and fifty. For the period 1906- 
1925 we almost maintained this average; for 
that twenty-year period the average number 
going out from the United States and Canada 
was 826. But in recent years there has been a 
steady decline so that in 1926 only 778, and 
in 1927 only 558 missionaries went out from 
all North American sending societies. This de- 
crease has been due not only to the financial 
condition of many boards but also to a real 
lack of fully qualified candidates; and this lat- 
ter aspect of the situation bids fair to be even 
more serious in the future due to a great de- 
crease in the number of student volunteers. 


Therefore, leaving wholly out of considera- 
tion Jerusalem’s proposals for an enlarged work 
and an increase in personnel, in the years out 
ahead we must do much better than we have 
been doing in order to prevent a continued 
decrease in the missionary forces of the world. 
The responsibility of the Student Volunteer 
Movement is clear, and our spirit and purpose 
ought with God’s help to be made equal to it. 


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